October 19, 2012 8:27 pm

Show Preview: Cosmic Queries: Tour of the Solar System – 10-21-12

As much fun as we have with the interviews of guest scientists and celebrities, one of my personal favorite segments we do are the Cosmic Queries. That’s because watching Neil deGrasse Tyson answer fan questions submitted by you, on the fly, off the cuff, is just a lot of fun. Throw in the interplay with comedians like Eugene Mirman, Chuck Nice and Colin Jost and it can get difficult to not laugh out loud and ruin the recordings. (Okay, so I may have done that once or twice, anyway.)

This Sunday’s podcast is Cosmic Queries: Tour of the Solar System, with Eugene Mirman throwing questions at our host. “What would happen if a black hole entered the universe?” “Could there be life in the oceans under the icy surface of Europa?” “Is NASA being short-sighted by focusing on the Moon and Mars and missing out on opportunities to explore the rest of the solar system?”

This is one episode you won’t want to miss. It will be available for downloading here and on iTunes at 7:00 PM EST, this Sunday. Where else are you going to find out about inadvertently murdering alien fish, how quickly a 16” pepperoni pizza would take to cook on Venus, why so many people are obsessed with the idea of ancient aliens, whether Jupiter’s gravity is the solar system’s vacuum cleaner, and if we could actually hide behind Saturn’s rings like they did in Star Trek?

And don’t forget to get outside and catch the Orionids meteor shower tonight and tomorrow night. They’re made up of debris from Halley’s Comet. Visible after midnight until dawn.

That’s if for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Jeffrey Simons